(CNSNews.com) - In last night’s Republican presidential debate in Ames, Iowa, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R.-Pa.) said that a country that decided it was not acceptable to execute a rapist but it was acceptable to abort a child conceived through rape “doesn’t have its morals correct.”

“You know, the Supreme Court of the United States on a recent case said that a man who committed rape could not be killed--could not be subject to the death penalty--yet the child conceived as a result of that rape could be,” said Santorum. “That to me sounds like a country that doesn't have its morals correct. That child did nothing wrong. That child is an innocent victim.”

Santorum was responding to a question that had been put to him by Byron York of the Washington Examiner, which sponsored the debate along with Fox News.

“You would allow no exceptions for [abortion in] cases of rape and incest,” said York. “Polls have long shown that large majorities of Americans support at least some exceptions for abortion. Are your views too much, even for many conservatives to support?”

Santorum did not back down from his defense of life, insisting that the life of every unborn child should be protected.

“To be victimized twice would be a horrible thing,” said Santorum . “It is an innocent human life. It is genetically human from the moment of conception. And it is a human life.

“And we in America should be big enough to try to surround ourselves and help women in those terrible situations who've been traumatized already,” said Santorum. “To put them through another trauma of an abortion I think is too much to ask. And so I would absolutely stand and say that one violence is enough.”